Tuesday’s Tool: Online Voting

One of the most engaging aspects of our Presidents is the election process. Even with our current president in the middle of his term, there is still talk about the next election. The election process is a great way to engage students when talking about our governmental officials.

Now, there are several great online tools one can use when holding your own elections.

Google Forms is the feature in Docs that allows users to set up online quizzes, surveys, applications, and even voting ballots. Forms are easy to set up and share. Results are automatically recorded on a spreadsheet. Real-time results in attractive graphs can be shared quickly. The only issue is that Google Forms offers very few options when it comes to limiting the number of times participants vote. One can assign unique codes or usernames that are easy to monitor on the spreadsheet, but this doesn’t allow for privacy. If your school has the Google Apps suite, ballots can be required to include a unique email address or user name.

Survey Monkey is another popular survey tool that allows for elections or polls. Using the email invites, you can avoid double-voting. Survey Monkey also has some advanced features for viewing and analyzing results. The best part is that like Google Forms, it’s free!

While these are the two most popular survey sites that can also serve as voting tools, there are many other online tools out there for voting purposes. BallotBin is an easy-to-use and simple service to collect votes. eBallot takes ridding the world of paper ballots seriously as they provide top-notch security features, analysis tools, and even a paper-hybrid option. For an extensive list of online voting tools, check out Mashable’s list of 40+ online polling tools.

Are there other tools or techniques for running online voting? How do you teach the election process to your students?

Zac Early is an instructional specialist for the eMINTS National Center.